Category: Economics

Millions of Solar Panels Aging Out. Recycling’s a Problem Big as Profits.

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The prospect of a future glut of expired panels is prompting efforts by a handful of solar recyclers to address a mismatch between the current buildup of renewable energy capacity by utilities, cities, and private companies—millions of panels are installed globally every year—and a shortage of facilities that can handle this material safely when it reaches the end of its useful life, in about 25 to 30 years…

The area covered by solar panels that were installed in the US as of 2021 and are due to retire by 2030 would cover about 3,000 American football fields, according to an NREL estimate. “It’s a good bit of waste,” said Taylor Curtis, a legal and regulatory analyst at the lab. But the industry’s recycling rate, at less than 10 percent, lags far behind the upbeat forecasts for the industry’s growth…

A startup called SolarCycle estimates that recycling each panel avoids the emissions of 97 pounds of CO2; the figure rises to more than 1.5 tons of CO2 if a panel is reused. Under a proposed US Securities and Exchange Commission rule, publicly held companies will be required to disclose climate-related risks that are likely to have a material impact on their business, including their greenhouse gas emissions…

SolarCycle is one of only five companies in the US…capable of providing recycling services. The industry remains in its infancy and is still figuring out how to make money from recovering and then selling panel components, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. “Elements of this recycling process can be found in the United States, but it is not yet happening on a large scale…“

By current standards, the tech isn’t overly difficult. Over time, with competition expected to grow trying to meet existing demand, I expect there will only be improvements in both the recycling processes and marketing those portions sold on for use separate from reintroduction to their original purposes…generating electricity from sunlight.

Yes, I am concerned over investment in this recycling need getting off the ground early and efficiently enough to keep up with what will be dynamically expanding for years to come.

Sneakers “recycled” by Dow found in secondhand shoe store

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Joe Brock planted location trackers in old shoes

At a rundown market on the Indonesian island of Batam, a small location tracker was beeping from the back of a crumbling second-hand shoe store. A Reuters reporter followed the high-pitched ping to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile.

There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with a tracking device hidden in one of the soles. These familiar shoes had traveled by land, then sea and crossed an international border to end up in this heap. They weren’t supposed to be here.

Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore.

Dow, a major producer of chemicals used to make plastics and other synthetic materials, in the past has launched recycling efforts that have fallen short of their stated aims. Reuters wanted to follow a donated shoe from start to finish to see if it did, in fact, end up in new athletic surfaces in Singapore, or at least made it as far as a local recycling facility for shredding.

Surprise, surprise! The shoes ended up in the secondhand clothing market. None of the excuses are especially creative…or successful IMHO.

France will cover their parking lots with solar panels

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French parking lots could soon generate as much electricity as 10 nuclear power plants, after a law is expected to win final passage on Tuesday requiring canopies of solar panels to be built atop all substantial lots in the country.

The plan makes France a world leader in efforts to cover as many surfaces as possible with solar panels, a step advocates say will be crucial in broader plans to phase out fossil fuels in the coming years. The expansion could add as much as 8 percent to France’s current electrical capacity.

The cost of solar panels continues to drop, and they are an increasingly competitive source of energy both for individual households and bigger consumers. But one big challenge is finding enough space for them to generate electricity in bulk. That’s why policymakers have parking lots in their sights: They are big and unbeautiful, and covering them with solar panels doesn’t take away from anything else.

So much smarter than the political hacks in DC.

Japan confronts a new reality…becoming a nation of the elderly

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Average age of workers in this mountain village restaurant is 70

…This dynamic is happening all over Japan as the birth rate continues its decades-long decline. The country’s population peaked in 2010, at 128 million. Now it’s less than 125 million and projected to keep shrinking over the next four decades. At the same time, Japanese people are living longer—87.6 years for women and 81.5 years for men, on average. Except for the tiny principality of Monaco, Japan’s population is now the oldest in the world.

The numbers, though stark, don’t convey how profoundly this demographic shift is playing out day to day. The increasingly disproportionate mix of more and more seniors and fewer and fewer young people is already altering every aspect of life in Japan, from its physical appearance to its social policies, from business strategy to the labour market, from public spaces to private homes. Japan is becoming a country designed for and dominated by the old…

Japan’s path foreshadows what’s coming in many areas of the world. China, South Korea, Italy, and Germany are on a similar trajectory; so too is the United States, although at a slower pace. Five years ago, the world reached an ominous milestone: For the first time in history, adults 65 and older outnumbered children under five years old.

If Japan is any guide, ageing will change the fabric of society in ways both obvious and subtle. It will run up a huge bill that governments will struggle to pay. Meeting the challenge won’t be easy, but the future isn’t necessarily all downhill. Japan’s experience, with its characteristic attention to detail and design, suggests extreme ageing—a world in which an increasing share of the population is old—may inspire an era of innovation.

I don’t doubt the Japanese will get it right. Workable, functional, eventually meeting all critical standards global society is capable of. I’m not so confident about the GOUSA. Not with our out-of-date politicians in place…beholden to 19th Century standards. Which start off…your most important task is to get re-elected. Then (maybe), you start to consider the needs of the folks who elected you.

AI(bot) Journalist appears to be a Plagiarist

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The prominent tech news site CNET‘s attempt to pass off AI-written work keeps getting worse. First, the site was caught quietly publishing the machine learning-generated stories in the first place. Then the AI-generated content was found to be riddled with factual errors. Now, CNET‘s AI also appears to have been a serial plagiarist — of actual humans’ work…

Futurism found that a substantial number of errors had been slipping into the AI’s published work. CNET, a titan of tech journalism that sold for $1.8 billion back in 2008, responded by issuing a formidable correction and slapping a warning on all the bot’s prior work, alerting readers that the posts’ content was under factual review. Days later, its parent company Red Ventures announced in a series of internal meetings that it was temporarily pausing the AI-generated articles at CNET and various other properties including Bankrate, at least until the storm of negative press died down.

Now, a fresh development may make efforts to spin the program back up even more controversial for the embattled newsroom. In addition to those factual errors, a new Futurism investigation found extensive evidence that the CNET AI’s work has demonstrated deep structural and phrasing similarities to articles previously published elsewhere, without giving credit. In other words, it looks like the bot directly plagiarized the work of Red Ventures competitors, as well as human writers at Bankrate and even CNET itself.

I think we need some marching music, here and now. AI bots marching out of the office…and actual human writers coming in the door to produce real copy. Or…at a minimum…noting the differences between the two.

Why the French Want to Stop Working

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If you want to understand why the French overwhelmingly oppose raising their official retirement age from 62 to 64, you could start by looking at last week’s enormous street protest in Paris.

Retirement before arthritis read one handwritten sign. Leave us time to live before we die said another. One elderly protester was dressed ironically as “a banker” with a black top hat, bow tie, and cigar—like the Mr. Monopoly mascot of the board game. “It’s the end of the beans!” he exclaimed to the crowd, using a popular expression to mean that pension reform is the last straw…

France is not alone with this problem. Rich countries everywhere are facing similar demographic challenges, and pushing up their retirement ages to cope. The advocates of reform in France should have more room to maneuver than most, because retirements here last an average of about 25 years, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That’s among the longest in Europe, where retirements even out at about 22 years, and well above the average retirement duration in the United States, where people now live for about 16 years after they stop working…

Well-written with reasonable explanation(s). Europeans will – I think – get it before many Americans. But, that ain’t the point either. Reflect upon the article’s conclusions – especially the direction presumed of a changing and growing economy.

Egg prices have soared 60% in a year. Here’s why!

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The rising cost of eggs in the U.S. is denting household budgets. Americans in recent years have increased the number of eggs they consume while reducing their intake of beef and venison, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Egg consumption has grown in part because more families are eating them as their main protein substitute, Los Angeles Times reporter Sonja Sharp told CBS News. “Each of us eats about as many eggs as one hen can lay a year,” she said.

As demand for eggs has risen, production in the U.S. has slumped because of the ongoing bird, or “avian,” flu epidemic. Nearly 58 million birds have been infected with avian flu as of January 6, the USDA said, making it the deadliest outbreak in U.S. history. Infected birds must be slaughtered, causing egg supplies to fall and prices to surge…

Egg prices in December rose 60% from a year earlier, according to Consumer Price Index data released Thursday. Across U.S cities, the average price for a dozen large grade A eggs was $4.25 last month, according to figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis…

Sharp said prices will likely not fall again until after new chickens are born without the infection and grow to egg-laying age. More than 300 flocks of farm-raised poultry have been hit by the outbreak as of last Friday, according to USDA data.

And don’t hold your breath waiting for prices to return quickly to the “good old days” following a return to previous production scale. There isn’t an oversupply of producers or distributors in the GOUSA willing to be the first to give up inflated prices.

CNET comes out about publishing AI-written articles for months

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The AI-written CNET articles bear the byline CNET MONEY STAFF which is identified on the outlet’s website as “AI Content published under this author byline is generated using automation technology.”

The first article written by CNET Money Staff was published on November 11 with the headline, “What is a credit card charge-off?” Since then, the news site has published 73 AI-generated articles, but the outlet says on its website that a team of editors is involved in the content “from ideation to publication. Ensuring that the information we publish and the recommendations we make are accurate, credible, and helpful to you is a defining responsibility for what we do.”

The outlet says they will continue to publish each article with “editorial integrity” and says, “Accuracy, independence, and authority remain key principles of our editorial guidelines.”

You betcha!